Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Some People Just Have Too Much Money

Stan Kroenke, the billionaire owner of the NFL’s Rams, has agreed to
purchase the historic W.T. Waggoner Estate Ranch in Texas,
representatives of the ranch said on Tuesday. Terms for the purchase of
the more than 520,000-acre estate were not disclosed. The ranch had been
listed with an asking price of $725 million.
District
Judge Dan Mike Bird in Vernon, Texas, allowed the family owners of the
Waggoner Ranch to proceed in a private transaction with Kroenke, one of
the wealthiest owners in professional sports and the owner of 11 ranches
in Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, and British Columbia. The Waggoner went
on the market in 2014 after Judge Bird ordered a sale to end more than
20 years of family litigation...
Kroenke recently decided to move
his National Football League team from St. Louis to a privately
financed $1.8 billion stadium in Inglewood, Calif. Along with the Rams,
he also owns the National Basketball Association’s Denver Nuggets,
the National Hockey League’s Colorado Avalanche, Major League Soccer’s
Colorado Rapids, and two-thirds of the English Premier League’s
Arsenal soccer club. Kroenke’s fortune is worth about $6.2 billion,
according to Bloomberg estimates.
The
Waggoner is the largest U.S. ranch within one fence, marketed as
measuring 520,527 acres (210,650 hectares), or 800 square miles (2,072
square kilometers). The sale to Kroenke will include additional acreage
that brings the total to about 535,000. The King Ranch, based in South Texas, has more acreage spread over several parcels....With 6,800 head of cattle, the Waggoner is one of the 20 largest cattle
ranches in the U.S. and is known worldwide for its quarter horses, which
number 500. The ranch also has 1,000 oil wells, 30,000 acres of
cropland, and an abundance of deer, quail, feral hogs, waterfowl, and
other wildlife.